The University of North Carolina announced Thursday it has hired an independent panel including a former governor and a national consulting firm “to help address different aspects of issues related to an internal investigation that found course irregularities in the African and Afro-American studies department.”

The announcement was made in an e-mail from UNC chancellor Holden Thorp, which included the news that former Gov. Jim Martin would examine whether academic irregularities may have occurred in years prior to 2007.

The university previously acknowledged that 54 courses in its African and Afro-American studies department (AFAM) between 2007 and 2011 were either fraudulent or poorly supervised. Work by reporter Dan Kane of The News & Observer has indicated that many students in some of the suspect classes were UNC athletes.

Academic fraud was among the violations the NCAA found in the North Carolina football program when placing the Tar Heels on three years probation in March, which included a bowl ban for the 2012 season.

Public concern developed regarding whether there had been prior academic fraud when the transcript of a former student, Julius Peppers, briefly was made available on the UNC website. Now a star in the NFL, Peppers played both football and basketball for the Tar Heels despite what the transcript shows to be a difficult academic career. The majority of the few courses on the transcript in which high grades were earned were in the AFAM department.

Martin will work with Virchow, Krause & Company, a management consulting firm with experience in academic auditing procedures.

Thorp said the board of trustees, university president Thomas Ross “and we all believe that this is an important step in rebuilding the confidence that you deserve to have in our academic integrity. This review will begin immediately.”

In addition, Thorp has asked American Association of Universities president Hunter Rawlings to lead a review of the relationship between the academic side of UNC and the athletic department. Rawlings has been president at both Iowa and Cornell. He will begin his work after Martin’s review is complete.

Carolina also is making changes to its academic support services for athletes, including a reorganization of the service, the hiring of a new director and affirming that the College of Arts & Sciences is in command of the advising and support services for student-athletes. Thorp also wants faculty members more strongly involved in the matters of the athletic department.

Thorp said the administration wants to “engage the entire campus community” in a discussion about the role of intercollegiate athletics in the university.

“The academic issues that we have confronted are unacceptable for our university, and we are intent on resolving them,” Thorp wrote. “Nothing is more important than restoring integrity to this university that we all love.”